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Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and one of the global faces of India’s IT revolution, is likely to take a plunge into electoral politics by joining the Congress.
A senior industry source said apart from a being a technocrat he commands good popularity in Bangalore, the city that headquarters the company he co-founded with six others some 32 years ago.
In June 2009, Nilekani quit Infosys to join UIDAI as its chairman. He was also given the rank of a cabinet minister. Bangalore South, considered BJP bastion, is currently represented by party heavyweight Ananth Kumar.
However, BJP is learnt to be planning to field former Test player Anil Kumble from the seat this time, as Kumar has decided to focus more on election campaigning. A spokesperson for Kumble declined to comment.
Here's a list of 10 prominent professionals who left their cosy jobs to join politics
1) Jairam Ramesh:
Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh is an engineer by education but better known as an economist. In 1978, Ramesh joined the World Bank for a short assignment. He returned to India in December 1979 and worked as assistant to economist Lovraj Kumar at the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices. From 1983 to 1985 he was Officer on Special Duty in the Advisory board of Energy. He then worked in the Planning Commission, too.
2) Meera Sanyal:
Former country head of ABN Amro Bank Meera Sanyal contested south Mumbai constituency against Millind Deora, son of top Congress leader and former petroleum minister Murli Deora. She lost the polls but not the spirit in 2009.
3) Mallika Sarabhai:
Mallika Sarabhai, a reputed dancer, fought as an independent in Gandhinagar against BJP’s prime ministerial candidate LK Advani in 2009. Sarabhai, daughter of a space scientist, has worked with victims of the 2002 communal riots in which about 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were hacked and burned to death.
4) Shashi Tharoor:
Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Shashi Tharoor , a writer and former UN under-secretary general, won Thiruvananthapuram seat as Congress candidate in 2009. Tharoor, who was India’s candidate for UN Secretary-General in 2006, kept his eyes on a more local political role since his return to his home state.
5) Nirmala Sitaraman:
BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitaraman worked with Pricewaterhouse Coopers as a Senior Manager (research and analysis) and the BBC World Service before joining politics.
6) Dinesh Trivedi:
Former Union Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi completed his MBA in 1974 and worked in Chicago for two years for the Detex Company, before returning to India, where he worked for a logistics provider Lee and Muirhead. In 1984, he quit the job to start his own air freight company based in Kolkata. He also started a consumer protection centre.
7) Arvind Kejriwal:
Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal was a former tax official and was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award for Emergent Leadership, widely described as Asia's Nobel prize, for social work and initiatives to fight corruption in 2006. In 2011, Kejriwal came to the limelight as the backroom organiser of the anti-corruption campaign led by Anna Hazare.
8) Amit Mitra:
West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra obtained his masters from the Delhi School of Economics and further completed his PhD in 1978 from the prestigious Duke University in the US. He taught at Duke University and Franklin & Marshall College for over a decade before returning to India. He joined the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and rose to be its secretary-general.
9) Rajeev Shukla:
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Rajeev Shukla was a reporter for Hindi daily Jansatta. Shukla held this job until 1985, when he became a special correspondent for Ravivar magazine. As his skills grew, he became the anchorman for Rubaru, a highly-popular television news show. The Observer group of newspapers hired him as a senior editor, and he continued in that job until being elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2000.
10) Captain GR Gopinath:
The founder of low-cost carrier Air Deccan, Captain GR Gopinath, contested the 2009 Lok Sabha polls as an independent candidate from Bangalore. Gopinath lost an Assembly election before — as BJP candidate from Gandsi in Hassan district in 1994 when the party was still a new outfit in the state.
